Daughters To Wed | Four
Pairing: Prince!Tom Holland x Reader
Warnings: Okay, so, lots of mentions of blood. Like, L O T S. And Tom gets really drunk. And I think like one curse word?
Summary: You are the daughter of a man infamous for having many children, only to marry them off in an effort to climb the social ladder and gain more riches. You have grown up hating the idea of marriage, only to be married to the Prince of Braydal, and the future King, Thomas Holland. The both of you are very unwilling partners, and that seems to be the only thing you have in common. It isn’t until things start to crumble around you that you realize there might be more to the cold prince than you thought.
Time no longer existed as Tom felt a warm liquid soak into his clothing. Blood, in pools this large, was less the bright red it was commonly associated with, and more of a blackish color. His heart felt as if it were beating in slow motion as he tried to push himself up from the carriage floor.
The crowd outside the carriage was chaos, as men ushered their wives and children into what they deemed as safe places, people screamed, shoes clattered against cobblestone, and horses reared.
Tom could not focus on anything other than the blood. There was so much blood. Never in his life had he ever seen so much blood. Even, at twelve, when he busted his head on a tree branch goofing around in the woods with Harrison, there had been blood down the side of his face and all over his shirt.
It felt as if the entire bottom of the carriage had been painted in this iron-smelling, black-red substance. His clothing was heavy with the stuff, seeping through the several layers that he wore. The stench of iron was so thick, that he could taste it in his mouth.
This moment, just after the gunshot, these few seconds of the young prince sitting in blood, sliding through it to get himself into a sitting position as the people around him went crazy with hysteria, would haunt his nightmares until the day he died.
Two more gunshots rang loudly over the buzzing of the parade attendees, cutting through the thick cloud muddling Tom’s mind. This time it had been the royal police as they took the shooter to the ground. His hands were secured to his back as a few people weakly cheered.
Meanwhile, Tom had realized that the blood soaking into and through his clothes was your blood. You were splayed out on the floor, staring up at the sky with a blank stare that shook your husband to his very core. It hadn’t even taken a moment from the second he saw you for him to catapult into action.
Shoving his way up to the Coachman’s seat, Tom looked a little bit like a mad man. He was covered in blood, his eyes wild and his hair a mess as he snatched the reins from the unoccupied bench. The coachman had fled to safety beneath the carriage, which was one of the only things that kept Tom from whipping the leather against the mares’ backs and riding back toward the palace.
“GET OUT FROM UNDERNEATH!” Tom screamed, kicking the wooden front and drawing the attention of the scared onlookers. The coachman scrambled out from the side, splayed out on his back next to the curb of the stone roadway. His lips moved in a stutter, but noise didn’t come out until the Prince snapped the reins and began to maneuver his way through the crowd and the stalled parade.
“YOUR HIGHNESS!” He yelled, but Tom didn’t stop.
Even when he got to the palace, the carriage careened into the dirt in front of the steps, kicking up rocks and dust in its violent wake. The horses were still moving when Tom jumped off the side, rolling with the momentum. Jagged rocks scraped through the fabric of his blood soaked clothing. The doors of the palace opened behind him, but he didn’t notice the voices being thrown at his back, all he could think was to get to you.
Scrambling back onto his feet, a task much easier said than done in his state of mind, Tom threw himself against the carriage door and yanked it open.
You were as pale, unblinking, and your chest barely moved as you lay helplessly on the floor. Half clambering into the carriage, Tom pulled you into his arms and tried not look back at the puddle of blood collected where you had been. You let out a small gasp as Tom settled back on the ground, which lit a small hope in his heart.
Just maybe you would be okay.
Maids and butlers and what appeared to be the entire palace staff had flooded outside and gathered around the both of you. Through the ringing in his ears and the cloud over his head, Tom yelled for them to send for a doctor, a nurse, anything!
“Please.” He pleaded, holding you in his arms, clutching you to his chest as if it would keep your soul from leaving your body.
“You, my dear, are very drunk.” Tom looked up into the dark brown eyes of one of his closest friends. He stood in a doorway, the world spinning around him and the only thing to keep him anchored was the wall. Stumbling forward in a drunken stupor, he fell into the long and warm embrace of Lady Coleman.
Zendaya carried his weight with ease, half carrying and half dragging him through the hall to her sitting room. Once there, she gently coaxed him onto a plush velvet green armchair just in front of a well-lit hearth. Heat came out in waves that warmed his chilled bones. He was drenched in rainwater after the long walk from the tavern to Zendaya’s home. It was nights like this that Tom refused guards and fancy clothes and carriages and, apparently, cloaks. One guard followed him the whole night, poor man. Zendaya was almost positive that all the prince’s guard played rock-paper-scissors or drew straws when it came to deciding who would go out with Tom on his bender.
Tom has been out drinking, alone, at a tavern close to his friend’s studio flat just outside of the Capital. Zendaya, while technically married to a wealthy man, lived alone. In all the years Tom and Zendaya have known each other, Tom has never met her husband. Rumor had it that he was a gay man and she had no intention to seriously marry at the time. After the wedding, her husband left to travel the world and she stayed, taking up a career in the arts. She was a wonderful dancer and an even better actress. In fact, Tom and Zendaya had actually met after one of her performances just a few years ago.
At the beginning of their friendship, there had been many rumors that they had become lovers and that the young prince intended to make her his mistress after his wedding. In reality, while Tom was very attracted to her, she was very beautiful, she was also married. There was also the matter of his betrothal, and the small fact that she had made it very clear that she had no need of a man.
“My life is good because my husband is never home, what makes you think I want to ruin that by having you, or any other man, in my bed?” Had been her exact words. So, they stayed friends.
“God, I hope so, I’ve been drinking for hours.” He raked a hand through his wet curls, which were weighed down with water which dripped from the ends. He stared at the flames in the fireplace as they reached for the top of the chimney. Each lick of orange curved and danced in its brick home, moving in such a captivating manner that for a moment, Tom could see why people were so attracted to pyromania.
Zendaya shot him a look, walking to the liquor table tucked into the corner of the room, grabbed a glass, and filled it with water. When she walked back over to her very intoxicated friend, she put the glass into his line of sight with a sigh. Snapping to attention, Tom was eye to eye with the glass of water, nodding his appreciation as he took the cup from her outstretched hand.
“You’ve been married less than a month Tom, usually husbands don’t drink themselves into a stupor until the second wedding anniversary.” Zendaya sat in a chair opposite her guest, looking very regal and proper in her cream nightgown and silk floral dressing robes. She had managed to stuff her hair into a sloppy French twist with a hair pin or two before she had rushed to answer the pounding at her front door. Tom’s lips twitched in amusement when he realized that, even in night clothing, Zendaya looked like the royal in this room, and not him.
There was a pause as Tom sipped at his water and Zendaya waited, her ankles crossed and her hands folded neatly into her lap. When Tom set his empty cup on the arm of his chair, he launched into a drunken rant on the inner workings of his month-old marriage. Zendaya tried not to think of how wet he was making her furniture as he complained.
“I cannot stand to be married to her another day! I cannot take it. She has my whole family, and Harrison, and Tessa, wrapped around her finger and I have no idea how. Actually, that’s a lie, I know how she’s done it. She is just as clever as her scheming father!” Tom pointed a drunken finger at nothing in particular. At this point, it felt like he was talking more to himself than to her.
After about an hour of nodding her head and ‘Oh yes, I understand’, Tom had slowed down and looked like he was about to fall over in his seat. Zendaya coaxed him to his feet and basically carried his drunken dead weight into her guest room. It took a lot longer than normal as he poked at paintings and pictures framed on the wall. She tried not to feel too bad when he fell into the door jamb so hard that his shoulder would most definitely be bruised. By the time they made it into the room and over to the bed, Zendaya almost cried with relief. Tom was asleep before his body even hit the mattress. Poking her head outside, she quickly informed the royal guard that Tom would be sleeping in her guest bedroom and he was welcome to come inside to keep watch from there.
The guard followed her inside without any surprise. This was not unusual behavior for the young prince. This was the seventh time Tom had slept in her guest bedroom since the beginning of his marriage. Always drunk, always disheveled, always complaining.
Zendaya waved goodnight to the guard and then found her way to her own bed where she fell asleep quickly.
The next morning, Zendaya was surprised to see Tom still in her home. He stood behind the chair he sat in last night, which was still damp given how utterly soaked Tom had been. The fire in the fireplace was out thanks to her maid who had left just after Zendaya had gone to sleep. She always woke up before the maid, Anne, made it back in the morning. Normally it wouldn’t be a problem, but it had been raining for the last week and with the rain came a cold.
“You’re up early.” She said as she entered the room.
“I was not the one absolutely pissed last night, either.” She teased, going to sit in the chair she had jokingly deemed as her ‘Tom-help’ chair given that she always sat in this chair when Tom came to talk to her. No one asked her about it, and she had never told anyone of the nickname she had given the armchair, but it had the name nonetheless.
“As you should be.” Tom tried, and failed, to fix his clothes a bit. While no longer wet, they were wrinkled from drying on his sleeping body over the last few hours. His hair, having also dried while Tom slept, was a mess of wild chestnut curls. And there, on the top of his right cheek was a print of the pillow or his shirt sleeve or something. He looked very childlike and innocent, causing a twisting feeling in Zendaya’s heart.
“I just wanted to apologize. This won’t happen again. Thank you, Zendaya.” Now that Tom had slept, drunkenly ranted, and sobered up, he wasn’t giving away anything. Zendaya stood, giving her prince a quick curtsy just before he turned to leave. The guard stood at her doorway, holding a cloak that she hadn’t seen last night but would have been tremendously useful. He held it out for Tom as he neared the exit, taking the cloak and covering himself with it.
Then, just before he left, Zendaya called out to him. After every visit, she had kept her mouth shut and refused to ask the one question she had been dying to ask. The only thing that had kept her form asking was propriety, but she could no longer keep quiet. Propriety be damned after the seven nights she’d had, housing a drunk prince after he complained about his marriage for an hour or so.
Tom turned around, the hood of his cloak still down, his eyebrows raised in response.
“Why do you really hate her so much?”
The question seemed to take Tom by surprise. All this time he had been telling Zendaya how much he hated you. He had been telling Harrison how much he hated you. He had been telling his family how much he hated you, had been telling himself how much he hated you, and somehow Zendaya had known it was bullshit. For a second, Tom was surprised that there could be any other reason to hate you besides the ones he had already given her. He had hated you since that day he saw you in the meadow with your brother.
And yet, the answer was immediate and painfully honest. It almost stole his breath away as he realized for the first time in a month of marriage, and years of engagement, what he truly felt. Why he chose to be this open with Zendaya but nobody else close to him was beyond any sound logic, but here he was. Laying his heart out for her to see in all it’s odd, complex, and vulnerable glory.
He grabbed the fabric where his hood met the rest of his cloak and looked her dead in the eyes.
“Because I think I love her.” Tom popped the hood over his head and pushed open the door. Zendaya stood in the hallway, mouth slightly agape and eyebrows raised. She almost didn’t believe her own ears. Sure, all this time she knew Tom had been lying about why he hated you, but never had she thought that was the answer. Harrison wouldn’t have been as shocked. He had been saying that Tom secretly loved you since day one. Zendaya, on the other hand, was shocked.
